The Law of Navigation

In the early 1900’s a British Royal Navy Officer by the name of Robert Falcon Scott set off to do something no man has ever done before- get to the south pole. At the age of only 13 Scott began his naval career as a cadet and eventually worked his way up to the British Royal Navy as a captain. Scott led a crew of explorers to the South Pole in honor of the British Empire. He made it there, unfortunately for Scott and for the British Empire, he and his men all died. Scott had failed to prepare accordingly. He supplied only enough equipment and food for four people but at the last minute decided to add a fifth. He planned the supply depots with too little supplies and too far apart. He decided to use motorized sleds in a time before snowmobiles were even invented. Essentially he was prepared to fail because he failed to prepare. Scott and his crew paid the ultimate price for failing to prepare.

Anyone can steer the ship. You could have led the explorers to death. I could have led the explorers to death. It really isn’t that hard. It takes a true leader to plan the course so that everyone doesn’t die. That is the law of navigation: anyone can steer the ship, only a leader can develop an effective plan to get there.

I feel like metaphorically speaking there are a lot of RFS’s in the world. They want to get somewhere, they have an end game in mind but unfortunately they don’t have the directions to get there. This leads to a shit ton of people going no where fast. They think they are doing the right thing by being productive and checking things off their to-do list but they never take the time to reflect and make sure they’re headed in the right direction. We need leadership to help us determine the best method of getting to our goal. Wether you have a mentor in your life who you follow or you are a leader and want to become better here is a game plan to help you and your followers strategically reach their destination.

1.) Determine A Course of Action

This is the easiest and hardest part of the plan. It’s kind of like a catch 22. Your goal here is to determine your end game. What are you trying to achieve? Make your end game HUGE. The reason I tell you to do that is because the odds are your end game is going to change. As you accomplish more, learn new things and uncover new opportunities you will start to develop passions for new ideas and be caught between two dreams. Don’t let that happen. It will hinder your progress and you will be stuck in the perpetual loop that most people are of bouncing from thing to thing, waiting for it to stick, then pivoting when it doesn’t. If you want an example of a huge end game look at Gary Vaynerchuk. Everyone knows Gary Vee’s end game: own the New York Jets. That’s it. He doesn’t give a fuck how he gets there. The dude has sold wine, flipped shit on eBay and sold multi-million dollar marketing gigs but at the end of the day he does it for one reason, it gets him closer to the Jets. What’s your end game? Don’t be “realistic”. Don’t sell yourself short and play it small. Make your ask fucking huge and you will be amazed what the world gives back to you.

2.) Adjust Your Priorities

This one’s pretty black and white. Prioritize your life. Get the fuck off Netflix. Stop wasting time with that person you don’t enjoy spending time with but you do just to pass time and not be lonely. Delete candy crush from your phone. If something your’e doing isn’t contributing to your goal it’s taking from it. You probably hate the IRS for taking half your damn paycheck so why are you letting yourself or other people take away your dream? If you have a hard time understanding this read Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone. Do you have to be as crazy about it as he is? absolutely not. I do not believe your life should be focused on one thing and one thing only, I believe in a healthy balance in all aspects of life. I do believe that a lot of shit we do as humans is because we want instant gratification and want to delay the process of work or pain in order to skate by and pretend like we got dealt a bad hand. “Well, I couldn’t do it because of this, If only I had been born with this then I would have that”, I think this is complete bullshit. Spending time with real friends is not a waste of time, going on a date with your significant other is not a waste of time, going out a couple nights to network and let loose is not a waste of time. The countless hours you spend indulging in Netflix, with your face glued to Facebook, or gossiping about other people who probably gossip about you are ALL a massive waste of time. I challenge you to track everything you do for a week and put everything you do in to two categories: need or want. Do you need to do what you are doing to be happy and healthy or do you want to? Pretty simple. I promise you will be amazed at how much extra time you have to achieve your dreams when you stop bullshitting and start working.

Take Action

The distance between your dreams and reality is called “Action”. Most people haven’t experienced it. They just like to talk about it, or open up Instagram and read motivational quotes and pictures of people who are actually doing it to make themselves feel better. Pablo Picasso once said “Action is the foundational key to all success”. You aren’t reading this on your iPhone because Steve Jobs intended to make something that would change the world. You can’t share this with your friends or family members because Mark Zuckerberg intended to make a social network that would allow people from anywhere connect in real time. You can do these things because these guys MADE them happen. Action always beats intention. I repeat: action always beats intention. No one cares what you intend to do. No one cares what you want to do. Want to end world hunger? Great. Guess how many people were just fed because you wanted that? Fucking zero. Zilch. If you want to make an impact on anyone or anything in this world you have to be willing to DO something about it. Stop telling yourself the time isn’t right. Stop sitting back and watching other people work towards their dreams while you sit on the sidelines and wish you had what they have. The most effective way to get something done is to do it. One of my dads friends told me the key to success is The Three F’s: Fail Fast Forward. You will fail, make it happen fast and do it moving forward. Wash, rinse, repeat. Failure sucks, it isn’t easy and it definitely isn’t pretty, but its worth it. There will be nothing worse than sitting on your death bed and thinking to yourself “what if”. What if I would have chased my dreams? What if I would have invented that thing? What if I would have asked that girl out? Don’t let your life be a series of “what ifs” or excuses. Fail fast forward.

Review

The more you know about the past the better prepared you are for the future. Plain and simple. As a civilization we learn from the past and it helps us make better decisions as a whole for our future. We can do the same in our own lives. Track your progress as you work towards your goals so you can review them in the future. We can learn a lot about what is either helping or hurting us reach our goals by taking time to review what actions we have taken and the outcomes. Everything we are and we experience today is a reflection of our history and if we take a minute to realize that it will put things into perspective. Review your goals and your progress at least once a month. History is a Greek word that once literally meant “investigation”. Use your review time to investigate your own life. What’s working? What’s not working? Where can you do better? What can you change? Confuscius once said “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”. Learn from your mistakes. They are your greatest teacher. To know where you’re going you have to know where you’ve been. Review and investigate your life, make the correct pivots to help you move faster to your goal.

If you fail to prepare you better be prepared to fail. Don’t end up dead like Robert Falcon Scott and his explorers. They almost achieved something great but due to bad preparation and leadership they fell short. Don’t allow yourself to fall short. Determine the map for your own ship. Anyone can steer a ship, you have to be a true leader to chart the direction.